The concept was around even before Joan Didion made it part of our cultural vocabulary, but I only recently became acquainted with magical thinking through Stephen Colbert’s (unedited) interview with Prince Harry. The host discussed with his guest the specifics of his (Colbert’s) own magical thinking around the time he lost multiple members of his family and compared that to the fantasies Harry used as coping mechanisms after Princess Diana died. Which all prompted me to wonder about what sort of magical thinking I do, and what it actually is.
The other morning, The Kid woke up with one question on his lips: “Am I a miracle?” We’ve just watched Roald Dahl’s Matilda: The Musical a few times (and listened to the soundtrack endlessly, and bought tickets for the show when we’re in London later this year; you could say it’s a bit of an obsession) and laughed our way through the song by the same title–miracle, that is–so it was clear why it was on his mind. Like any good parent, I told him that he absolutely is one–a miracle, that is–and watched him light up in response.
This isn’t magical thinking, is it? Because every life truly is a miracle, and our children’s lives are especially miraculous to us, even if they’re entering a world that doesn’t see them as such. More magical–and miraculous–would be if TK and Little Brother became the NBA and soccer stars they’re each staking their futures on becoming, respectively (excuse me, LB is actually going to do both–focus on basketball during soccer’s off season, etc). We allow and even nurture this magical thinking because they’re young and they have plenty of time to be disappointed by the world and we also need something to get them to sports camp a couple of days a week during the summer holidays. Just like we let them believe in Santa for awhile–because magic, in its place, is appropriate.
But when does it stop being magic and start being delusion? Many people would say, for example, that my faith rides or crosses that border. I don’t blame them–personally, I think there are way too many delusional Christians (imagine thinking Kirk Cameron is a worthy leading man who makes good movies), which is why I was so hesitant to watch The Chosen upon some of their recommendations–call me Shania, but Christian cinemá thus far has not impressed me much (God’s still not dead, for those of you wondering). But approaching the stories I’ve heard all my life (and, in the process, have honestly become a bit numb to) through a new medium has been life-giving and eye-opening–especially to the condition that makes people most fit for an encounter with the divine: desperation.
In the end, maybe magical thinking is just that: desperation driving us toward a new way to hope. It’s the last thing to cling to when we’ve run out of options. The Hebrew word for hope is the same as the word for rope: tikvah, Maybe this form of hope is the only thing left to grab (or, rather, what grabs us) when we’re all out of answers, and all our wondering leads us, finally, to wonder.
“We are in a period where torture is taken for granted almost everywhere,” wrote May Sarton, “…and at the root of it all is the lack of imagination…I am more and more convinced that in the lives of civilisations as in the lives of individuals too much matter that cannot be digested, too much experience that has not been imagined and probed and understood, ends in total rejection of everything… The structures break down and there is nothing to ‘hold onto.’…Hatred rather than love dominates.”
In the end, maybe magical thinking is just thinking beyond what we can see to all that can be. Which is exactly what both imagination and hope are. And who says that isn’t real?